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Sending some love to Jake Tapper for standing up to WH’s war against Fox News

First, sorry for the light blogging today. I think I’ve overdone it the last few days in terms of playing catch-up both in my personal life and at the 8-5 after my week and a half long bout with the swine flu, and I came home tonight with a headache, lingering cough, and a feeling of being wiped out so I decided to take the night off from blogging.

That said, after quickly checking the headlines tonight, I have to give mega-props to ABC News Sr. WH Correspondent Jake Tapper, who over the last few years has been one of the few major bright spots in what is otherwise known to most of us as the sorry state of “mainstream media journalism,” where journalists more often than not take sides – and most of the time, it’s the “left side” they take rather than the objective side. Tapper, no stranger to asking this WH tough questions few other journalists would dare to (and who was just as tough with the Bush WH), took WH Press. Sec. Robert Gibbs to task today for the WH’s declaration of war on Fox News:

Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –

(Crosstalk)

Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –

Gibbs: ABC –

Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?

Gibbs: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o’clock tonight. Or 5 o’clock this afternoon.

Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” — why is that appropriate for the White House to say?

Gibbs: That’s our opinion.

There’s no video of the exchange, because it was an “off-camera WH briefing”, but Fox News’ Bret Baier discussed it tonight during the Political Grapevine segment of Special Report. Here’s the video – he starts at about the 1:45 mark:

Note at the end how Baier talks about how Fox confirmed with the WH that the attendees of Monday’s the off the record briefing with President Obama included MSDNC’s Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. What foul-smelling hypocrisy, but not exactly surprising.

Related: Brit Hume, the most adorable journalist ever, weighed in on his former show Special Report last night on the Obama WH’s targeting of Fox News for ridicule and containment. Read/listen/watch what he had to say here.

Fox confirmed with the WH that the attendees of Monday’s off the record briefing with President Obama included MSDNC’s Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. What foul-smelling hypocrisy, but not exactly surprising.

So ABC might actually might have figured out that they are in bed with a tyrant? MSNBC/GE has too much to lose…think of all those green jobs and medical equipment they would lose if they spoke out against their master’s plans! That’s the main reason we shouldn’t expect a peep out of them.

The WH control game is running strong; however, I still believe it is ANYTHING but talk about what is really going on with the troops that were asked for and ObamaCare that is really nothing but a power grab.

How embarrassing that Obama, who ran on a platform of open access after endlessly criticizing the Bush administration for being too secretive, should already have an “enemies list” of news organizations less than 1 year after being in office. But not being content with only having an “enemies list”, they want their preferred propaganda outlets (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN) to do the dirty work of actually preventing Fox from being allowed to report news from the WH. My God! Even Nixon was not that brazen! How pathetic!

At least Jake Tapper is a professional news person. This issue should be the defining moment for all other so called news people who cover the WH. We’ll see whether they roll over for Gibbs and Obama or whether they decide to develop some spine and stand up for freedom of speech.

God Bless Jake Tapper, but you might as well put butter on him and stick him in the egg yolk cuz he’s toast. The boy wonder butt sniffer otherwise known as Bob Gibbs is such a buffoon, he could make a box of rocks look smart. – Lorica

Compared to a box of rocks, the rocks would be Hawvud material (at least under affirmative action guidelines) while the administration with all its Lilliputins wouldn’t, even though their leader and glorious master was accepted under those same guidelines. (See? Even the intellectual universe known as Hawvud can make grand mistakes.)

Besides, what difference does all this make, anyway? Duh-1 has shredded the Constitution (with the aid and abetting of Congress) and he couldn’t care less if he’s acting illegally or not because now he’s the one who defines legal and illegal.

About the WH getting all hot and bothered is mostly about distraction. Obamacare is taking a dive, vacillating on the war in Afghanistan… They’d much rather be talking about FOX than the issues… our security.

At last! Jake Tapper the lone “Journalist” who decides he is actually going to do what he is supposed to do. Maybe he is the spark that will bring the other deadbeat wannabe/pretend to be reporters to the reality that America has lost all trust in them because they have become the problem instead of reporting the problem.